The Sandwich is going to Germany

Monday, May 1, 2017

I’ve had a guitar since I graduated from college. My grandparents bought me one when I stayed with them in the summers in the Catskill Mountains for like $20 and I started playing. In college, my friend Tom, who is also in the band, he had a guitar and was taking lessons so I started asking him to show me chords. I’d flip the guitar over because I’m left handed and he said I couldn’t do it that way, but I just had him show me anyway and I’d play it backwards. I should have gotten my hands on a left handed guitar, but I didn’t, so I play the guitar backwards.

It’s really confusing to a lot of people, amazing to some people, and it’s just because I’m lazy as fuck and never chose to learn differently.

I love music. I have always loved music. When it comes to 70s and 80s music I don’t think many people, besides Jimmy Kimmel, have the knowledge that I do. I like a lot of cheesy – some call it yacht rock – 80s music, but that’s the way it goes!

Ultimately I would write songs and play them for my friends occasionally but I was always really nervous about it. The stand up comedy and music things happened at the same time. I always fear playing in front of a bunch of people because I’m not a trained musician or singer and I’ve never done stand up comedy, well I did both of those things in December of 2016 and it was a very stressful time in my life. And it still is! My close friends Rob Danson, Tom Lally, Kent Irwin, Carl Mcdowell are in the band. Carl had never played bass until we started playing together. Kent had really never played drums, and I never really sang except for my own shit to myself or for a couple of people like my grandparents. Lally was scared shitless of playing in front of anyone except me! Then there is Rob Danson who is the musician of the group. He is a great lead guitarist, he’s musically competent, he was in many bands, so having him is the glue that really keeps us together. He still tunes Carl’s guitar for gods sake…and he’ll tune mine when we are on tour in Germany this summer.

We started playing covers but they just didn’t sound good. Kent, our drummer, was stoned one night (which is not uncommon) said, “Dude, lets just play our own shit. Lets jam!” The one thing I think I’m good at, I’m not good at many things, but I am good at coming up with songs. I’ll play chords, tell everyone what the changes are and I’ll start making up lyrics on the spot and then go back and write a song and come back together and we will have a song. That’s ultimately how we do it. We’ve been playing that way for about a year.

Jason Manns, a great musician (look him up), who is a good friend of mine said “Hey, I’m playing at the Troubadour…would you guys play 3 songs and open for me?” Scared shitless, I fought it, didn’t want to do it, we were a jam band calling ourselves Shit Sandwich who played in my basement! Finally agreed to it and the band learned 3 songs that I’d written and we worked on them and all came together and rehearsed the shit out of it, and….we KILLED it! We had a great night. My assistant Jess actually sang back up and she killed it. It was just a great night! So then asshole Jason Manns says, “Hey, come to Germany and go on tour with me.” Fuck!!!! He asked us to learn 8-10 songs and he’ll open for us and we will all play in Germany in 3 cities in July and thats what we are doing. We are going to Berlin, Cologne, and Frankfurt, and its scary and its exciting and just getting out of your own head and facing fear by punching it in the balls is what we are doing. We are now The Sandwich, not Shit Sandwich, and The Sandwich keeps on keeping on. The goal is to keep playing and share our music by recording some songs, place them in shows or movies, and keep on.